Big guns gather for Navy training drill in Seal Beach

Combining for an assault on a building during a simulated hostile drill, sheriff's SWAT team members are joined by a member of the base's civilian security force at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station on Tuesday.MICHAEL GOULDING, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Wildlife: One-fifth of the base's land area is a National Wildlife Refuge

Future: Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced steep proposed cuts to the military, but as long as there's a Pacific Fleet that needs arming, there will likely be a weapons depot at Seal Beach.

Source: U.S. Navy, base spokesman Gregg Smith

SEAL BEACH – A heavy-duty emergency response drama played out in three acts at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station on Tuesday.

First-responders contended with an active shooter, a gunman with hostages and a report of mustard gas being used on base through the morning and afternoon. But right at the rescue’s climax – when an Orange County Sheriff SWAT team was set to blow open a door to escort the unharmed hostages out of a bomb-rigged warehouse – an officer broke character.

“Anybody got a key to that, so we don’t have to break it?” he yelled to the safety officers watching him work.

SWAT usually wouldn’t mind a bit of property damage when working around an unexploded bomb, but they were guests at the base, participating in an interagency emergency scenario called Exercise Solid Curtain-Citadel Shield 2014.

The Navy’s largest annual “force protection drill,” Solid Curtain-Citadel Shield is being conducted through Friday at the Seal Beach base and at Navy installations across the country. It comes six months after 16 people were killed or wounded in a shooting on a Washington Navy installation.

“We always are training,” said base commander Capt. Tripp Hardy. “I think what’s unique about this one is that we’ve involved so many outside agencies. Normally it’s just internal security forces.”

Along with the SWAT and weapons of mass destruction teams in Orange County, command in San Diego helped coordinate the response at the Weapons Station, Hardy said.

“Seal Beach is killing innocent people,” the hostage taker yelled at one point during the stand-off.

He was supposedly part of a group of base employees gone rogue. In that way, the drill bore a similarity to the September shooting at the Washington Navy Yard.

Former Navy reservist Aaron Alexis, 34, killed 12 people and injured four more. He had worked at the Navy Yard as a contractor and his ID card was still valid, according to the FBI. Considered the second-worst mass shooting on a U.S. military base, the September incident brought a review of Navy base security policy.

“We need to know how an employee was able to bring a weapon and ammunition onto a DOD (Department of Defense) installation, and how warning flags were either missed, ignored, or not addressed in a timely manner,” Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the following week.

Hardy said he couldn’t speak to whether Tuesday’s drill was applying lessons learned from the Navy Yard shooting, but he did say that all bases were being told to practice an active shooter scenario – specifications that haven’t always come down from Washington, D.C.

The “reservist” holding the hostages was taken down by a combined force of two SWAT and four Naval Security officers, who dashed in as a larger SWAT team was assembling when they thought they heard gunfire.

(It was actually the sound of kicking, but SWAT commander Lt. Joe Balicki, who was observing the drill, said it was the right move to make in the moment.)

“I’m glad the Naval Weapons Station personnel got to be a part of the react,” he said, using the jargon for, roughly, group of guys and gals who beat down the door, neutralized the enemy and secured the hostages.

Combining for an assault on a building during a simulated hostile drill, sheriff's SWAT team members are joined by a member of the base's civilian security force at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station on Tuesday. MICHAEL GOULDING, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
While breaking open the door building during a simulated hostile drill, sheriff's SWAT team members, right, are joined by a members of the base's civilian and military security forces at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station on Tuesday. MICHAEL GOULDING, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Members of the Orange County sheriff's SWAT team clear a building and rescue hostages during a simulated hostage situation at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station on Tuesday. MICHAEL GOULDING, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Members of the Orange County sheriff's SWAT team clear a building during a simulated hostage situation at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station on Tuesday. MICHAEL GOULDING, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Members of the Orange County sheriff's SWAT team rescue the hostages and clear a building during a simulated hostage situation at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station on Tuesday. MICHAEL GOULDING, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Members of the Orange County sheriff's SWAT team exit a building after rescuing hostages during a simulated hostage situation at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station on Tuesday. MICHAEL GOULDING, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Members of the Orange County sheriff's SWAT team regroup after clearing a building and rescuing hostages during a simulated hostage situation at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station on Tuesday. MICHAEL GOULDING, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Members of the Orange County sheriff's SWAT team enter a building at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Base during a simulated hostage drill held on the base Tuesday. MICHAEL GOULDING, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
A weapons of mass destruction disposal team from the California National Guard, in green, and the Orange County Sheriff's Department, work a simulated chemical attack. Duck decoys placed around the scene as if they had died were meant to be a clue during the emergency drill, held at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station in Seal Beach on Tuesday. MICHAEL GOULDING, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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